EP:458 | The Rattlesnake Hunters

On this episode, we are joined by two serious rattlesnake hunters from Texas, Dennis Cumbie and Mark Meneses. These men participate in the annual Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, helping capture between 5,000 and 20,000 pounds of western diamondback rattlesnakes each spring.

It's a fascinating process in which the snakes are milked for their venom, which is used by pharmaceutical companies to produce antivenom. We discuss how and why they do this and hear some incredible stories along the way.

Listen, Learn, and Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Five four five. Five to five five.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Five and three, two, one.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

All right, guys. Welcome to the hottest day in July so far. That's 109 yesterday. And I I'm assuming it's gonna get that hot today. That's the hottest I've ever experienced. Cush. Yeah, it's bad. It is, you know, it's terrible. And my air conditioner went out on my truck Sunday. So I've been enduring this heat without an air conditioner.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

It's so hot. Well, I mean, you know, you probably get get the hair blow, the wind blowing in your hair with the windows down and your sunglasses on. Yeah. You're probably fine by that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

And you if if you live in Phoenix or somewhere like that, you'll hear, well, it's a dry heat. Ain't nothing dry about this heat right here. You can walk outside to the mailbox and you come back. You ringing wet. You are. Look, if you're gonna get some work done, it's like from dawn till 7.38 or 30 minutes before dark. You just can't get out in, especially when you're my age. It's I mean, it's brutal.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

Yeah, I mean, even like it's six o'clock, six thirty, it's still just terribly hot.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Welcome to Mississippi. That's right. So while I've been kind of poking my lip out about my air conditioner, I saw I read something that reminded me of a really good kind of thing for guys to think about. But it said, think about your problem. And I thought about my air conditioner. It said, now write that down on a piece of paper. And let's pretend everybody in the world wrote down their problem and put it in a hat, and you had to go put yours in the hat and then draw out another one. Would you be willing to do that? And I thought to myself, no way. No, no, air conditioner's not that big of a deal compared to some of the stuff folks deal with.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

It's funny to believe this, but uh, you know, we hadn't had air conditioning for that long. I mean, we cuz you remember not having air conditioner?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

When I was little, I'm I'm so much older than you guys. I remember a lot of stuff, y'all know. You know, two channels on a black and white TV turning it for my daddy like that, but we didn't have any air conditioning until I was like six or seven years old. But and uh got through that okay. Minor inconvenience, what's happened is we've all gotten soft.

SPEAKER_04 2:31

Yeah, we have.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

You get the further you get away from that World War II generation, the softer we get. My dad and the guys he hung out with, man, they were tough. Yeah, they were tough as nails.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

But uh it is what it is. So, guys, because you may want to put your feet up on the table on this one. It's uh You know, you tricked me into this.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

You sent me a text that I got some Texas hunters coming. You want to come sit in on the podcast? I said, yes, because I'm telling you, for somebody that's not born or raised there, I love Texas as much as anybody. I've always said when I retire, I'm either gonna be a Winnebago test pilot or greeter at Walmart, and now say, I'm gonna work for the Texas tourism because I'm always talking about I love Texas. And then right before the thing, he seems to go, Oh, these are snake hunters. And I immediately sent back, is this a zoom or is it a joke? Because if I see somebody walking in the door, I'm out.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

I was worried when I heard that story. I was I was worried about Bobby. Let me get our guests introduced so they can join in this conversation. So, all the way from Sweetwater, Texas, we've got Mr. Dennis Cumbey and we've got Mr. Mark Manessus. Guys, we appreciate y'all joining us.

SPEAKER_06 3:50

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us. We appreciate y'all calling us. I wish we were live there with you. Uh we would have some special, special uh business to show you.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Yeah, I think the only way this works is minus one.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, we might. Yeah, none of us are big fans of snakes, but we we want to learn about them, and we we understand there's I mean, we do we we we have had other snake guys on, and we understand there's not as much to be afraid of as maybe it's a a lot of it is mental, but so look, let me Dennis, you worked for the uh USDA for a long time, and you and you've been you've been snake hunting or milking snakes, doing something with rattlesnakes since 1979.

SPEAKER_06 4:38

Yeah, that's when I was in college. I started hunting them then. Goodness gracious. We hunted them for money. I mean, it was a money for me and a couple of buddies. Uh when I was in college, we uh would come in and hunt them and then sell them here to the to the JCs at the Roundup. Uh the Roundup's been going on for this was our 68th year this year, so we've been having that for 68 years now.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Well, let's start there. Tell us about this roundup and then we'll Dudley we'll then we'll do the wrap. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 5:07

Sounds like history's roundup is pretty interesting. It actually started as a group of ranchers and farmers that uh got together because we had uh so many uh snakes in this area. People were being bitten livestock rooms, been vent uh pets, whatever. So they got this idea that they would gather up as many snakes and go hunting them and gather up as many as they could so they could get rid of the snakes. Well, and they literally the first roundup was basically uh throwing them all in a big pit, uh shooting them in a covering pit. So that's kind of where it got kicked off. What we've learned since then is that in any other hunting, all we're doing is just harvest it, harvesting those snakes. We're not eradicating them anyway. And so we have full respect for them, just like any other wildlife that y'all hunt or anybody else hunt. It's kind of the same type of thing. But we've got so many snakes out here that part of our roundup every year is to educate people around here about the roundup and about the snakes, the safety aspects of it, and to help somewhat control the numbers a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

What when you say the numbers, what how many snakes are y'all catching in an average roundup?

SPEAKER_06 6:22

You know, we never count snakes. That's funny, yeah. That's one of the first questions everybody asks. We do everything by pounds. And so we've had as few as like uh 12, 1,400 pounds turned in a year, and then we've had uh one year, what year was it? About seven or years ago, we had a record read over 24,000 pounds of snakes turned in in 2008.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Wow. Gosh, how many snakes do you think that equates to? Way, way too many.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Way too many. Let me let me ask you this. Is it getting if you catch that many snakes out there, uh, is is your is your search area getting bigger? Is the snake population going down, or are they just keeping up, keeping up, keeping up?

SPEAKER_05 7:05

Well, here I guess right around in uh the later part of the 90s, we uh ended up actually creating a research pit to uh start collecting data for uh to provide uh uh Texas Parks and Wildlife. So we started uh weighing random on random snakes, not getting all the big ones and small ones, just a random uh choosing. And uh so we started weighing each individual snake, uh started uh sexing them and then measuring them out. So uh what we were trying to do is figure out a uh male to female ratio. So uh as long as we stay in that uh male ratio being uh a higher than that female, then we're not gonna uh hurt the the population of the snake. And uh we we run on the average around a 60 to 40, uh male over female, because a male can uh mate with uh multiple females, kind of like deer and everything else.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

So look, guys, why don't we do this? Uh we we all got a bunch of questions that when we'll uh dive into understanding this whole thing. Dudley, why don't you start with the uh rapid fires? Let's get to know uh Dennis and Mark a little bit better.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

Sounds like a plan. Um all right, guys. Just like Bobby said, I'm gonna ask you about 10 or so questions. Just trying to get to know you better. So uh let's see, why don't uh Dennis, why don't you answer first and then Mark, you just answer right behind him. Okay. So uh are y'all ready?

SPEAKER_06 8:38

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

Uh tea, sweet or unsweet?

SPEAKER_06 8:42

Unsweet.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

Half and half. There you go. Favorite burger in Texas?

SPEAKER_06 8:52

Grill burger, sweetwater country club.

SPEAKER_04 8:55

Grill burger, sweet water country club. So name one of your favorite summer vegetables and how you like it prepared.

SPEAKER_06 9:03

Oh fried. Squash, fried.

SPEAKER_04 9:08

Both of those are good. What is the furthest distance each of you have ever traveled from home?

SPEAKER_06 9:17

Oh lord.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

Costa Rica?

SPEAKER_06 9:21

Oh, Belize, Hawaii.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

Okay, okay. Uh does the summer heat, does the summer heat tend to make you eat more or eat less?

SPEAKER_06 9:32

Less.

SPEAKER_04 9:33

Less. Um for some reason I'm a Moore guy. Uh have you watched any of the soccer world cup? Yes or no?

SPEAKER_06 9:43

Uh very little.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

Yes. Okay. Uh, what is the largest rattlesnake you've ever witnessed?

SPEAKER_06 9:54

Uh 74 inches.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

74. All right. So y'all are a team. Uh have you ever okay, have you ever found an a rattlesnake with any odd color phases or mutations?

SPEAKER_06 10:11

Yes. Albino.

SPEAKER_04 10:14

Okay. What is another non-rattlesnake species that really interests you? Just another snake.

SPEAKER_06 10:22

Uh cobras.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

Goodness gracious.

SPEAKER_05 10:31

Oh, the water mucks and uh okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

That ain't much better.

SPEAKER_04 10:35

And uh, they're both mad. And last but not least, will you where will you be celebrating the 250th birthday of the United States on Independence Day this year?

SPEAKER_06 10:48

Sweetwater, Texas. Uh at the golf course uh and then uh fireworks here that night.

SPEAKER_05 10:57

You're gonna you're gonna sound like it's it's a duplicate deal, but yeah, we've got a uh uh golf tournament that we're playing in uh this weekend. So yeah, Sweetwater Comes Club and then uh followed up by our big uh sparks in the park celebration. Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Man, Sweetwater just sounds like a cool town. Y'all got it going on.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Well, good answers, guys. So, guys, why don't you let's start off? How in the world do you guys get interested in snake hunting and catching snakes? Because that uh just seems like such an odd thing to do.

SPEAKER_06 11:32

Well, uh like I said earlier, my interest in it was uh, you know, you catch them and then you sell them to the JC's that's around them. So it was basically a moneymaker, and and uh some years the price, you know, just depends on the demand. But like this year, we paid $20 a pound for live snakes.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Okay, let's think about that. What's a snake gonna weigh? The average snake.

SPEAKER_06 11:55

Yeah, average snake's gonna weigh a pound and a half, maybe so about 30 bucks for per snake. Yeah, you think a big snake, he's six, seven pounds. Yeah, he's worth some money.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Yeah. I can see where that would add up, you know, based on you know how big of a year you guys said you had recently.

SPEAKER_05 12:15

Well, that year that that we had the 24, 25,000 pounds that we collected, uh, I think we paying $10 a pound or so. So we paid out.

SPEAKER_06 12:26

Yeah, we paid out nearly $250,000 of snakes.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So the so though these the snakes, but what who wants why is somebody paying $10 a pound for these things? What are you they're doing?

SPEAKER_06 12:38

There's no waste in that snake. Uh the meat is eaten and and sold. We cook about 1,500 pounds every year at our Roundup and serve it to people in our concession stand. And then the hides are used for our hats and belts, uh headbands and belts and boots and all that stuff. The heads are put in the polymer for paperweights. Um there is some people that actually want the gallbladders. Uh they say it makes an aphrodisiac.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Uh just no way, you know. This is a family show now, Dennis. You can't even get driving that in there on never heard that one. Heard about bears. Natural meds, yeah. Did you have you heard that?

SPEAKER_04 13:20

I've never heard it about snakes. No, man.

SPEAKER_06 13:23

Yeah, they supposedly make some kind of a herbal tea out of them. Okay. One of our members, uh, as one of the guys that's buying that stuff, he he didn't know, he didn't know they dried it out and grounded them powder and made a tea. He thought you just egged it. So as the these people were gathering, some of them, he just popped one in his mouth and swallowed it. And uh the guy that wasn't by them got laughed at me. He said, What's the matter? And he said, Oh, we don't eat them like that.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Goodness, goodness gracious. Well, uh I just uh what's a hunting trip like with you guys? Are y'all how do y'all find them?

SPEAKER_06 14:03

Well, I mean, it's it's uh, you know, we've got a lot of rocky ledgy areas around out here, railroads that come through, and uh a lot of chip rock, and then there's limestone in this area too. And so everywhere there's ledges and stuff, where there's holes, uh little small little caverns and creases in those, that's that's where we find them. So these western diamondbacks semi-hibernate in the winter. So they have to because they they're cold-blooded, so they'll freeze to death. Our winters are too cold for them. So they hibernate in those holes and stuff. So then in January and February, when it starts warming up a little bit, you go to where you find those dens. And it's it's it's a lot of work to trying to find dens. But you may go to the same den year after year for 10 or 15 years and get snakes out of that same den every year. And then we collect them, you know, they'll come out on a warm day and lay out on rocks and sun and pick them up like Easter eggs sometimes. Uh sometimes we have to go to a little more extreme measures to get them. Uh we use fuming, you know, we use a fuming system that we can we can drive them out of those holes if it's still a little cold. But if you're catching them that way, you catch more numbers. If you're just trying to like this time of year, if you're just trying to catch them, they're scattered everywhere because they're all out fooding and looking for water, so they're scattered across the countryside.

SPEAKER_05 15:24

Back in the early 2000s, I guess uh when we became the wind capital of uh of uh the US, we had uh all the infrastructures that was uh being put in place for for all these windmills. So you had all these uh trenches being dug in for uh uh all the power cables, underground cables going from turbine to turbine, turbine to the substations and stuff. And uh on a daily basis, uh they were having to check them those trenches because snakes moving moving uh through the evening and stuff like that were falling in those uh uh trenches and uh they'd end up having to collect and get them out of there before it they jumped on in there. So yeah, pretty pretty crazy around there.

SPEAKER_06 16:10

And we do have you know people get bitten around here. Uh livestock and pent more especially. Nearly everybody lives in the country. If you have dogs, you're gonna get uh you're gonna have your dogs. So it's actually a vaccine for dogs, rattlesnake vaccine. Comes out of a cut a company in California, I think it's called Red Rock. And they've actually used some of our venom before to create that vaccine for those dogs. Um people, you know, it's just that there's no vaccine, but there is anti venom. Uh all nearly all the medicine facilities in this part of the country to keep that anabom on on hand because there is a bike. And we do we do have some bikes. We don't at the Roundup, we uh we're very careful. And ours is not we don't get sleeping bags with them and do all that crazy stuff. We do do some handling. Uh we melt the snakes to get the venom, and and we do show them a lot, uh, kind of have a little fun with it, but but we are safety oriented. Uh but even with that, occasionally you know, we will have an accident. Uh and it does happen. Uh usually not too good. The venom's a hemotoxin that attacks red blood cells, and it basically kind of just dissolves muscle of the tissue. Uh a couple of friends I know, one of them described it as an injection of hot lava. The other one said, No, it's more like a blowtorch stuck on your finger and you don't get to move it. So it's very painful. Uh but uh most of the time it's not deadly. Uh it can be can be though, in severe situations. Most of the time.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

So this is predominantly western diamondbacks. Do y'all ever harvest any other species?

SPEAKER_06 17:54

Well, no, the only thing we buy to Gen Cons is just westerns, because that's 99.9% of what we have here. We do occasionally people will bring in a prairie rattler uh that are primarily more west of us. Uh we'll see a few of those, but not not too many.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Okay. So I want to just quickly ask a question about the vaccine for dogs. Does that totally protect the dog or does that buy you some time to get the dog to the veterinarian?

SPEAKER_06 18:26

Uh I'm not a veterinarian, but it's gonna, it's gonna, I don't know that it's gonna buy you some time, but it also probably gonna buy that dog some time because a lot of times, even if they get to the veterinarian, there's not a lot they can do for them. It depends where the dog gets bitten. But it's gonna what it's gonna do is re- reduce the severity of the bite.

SPEAKER_05 18:46

Some of the swelling.

SPEAKER_06 18:47

Some of the swelling stuff. It's usually when a dog gets bit, usually it if it's uh the nose or the head, he usually fine. If he gets bit in the neck or something and the swelling, he may, you know, has a hard time breathing.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, yeah. Boy, that'd be a terrible thing for you to happen to your dog. Gosh.

SPEAKER_05 19:06

Oh, I've seen have you seen any snake, snake bite pictures on a dog that's been bitten on the on the snout? Oh, they're terrible. Heads just oh that's yeah, it's yeah, the kid.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

What's the biggest or most productive den? One at one hole in the wall, one den. What's the biggest one y'all have been to or heard about as far as numbers of snakes?

SPEAKER_06 19:30

Uh yeah, I've heard of uh the biggest place that I've heard of stuff is when uh it's usually not a den itself, it's some kind of a man-made structure like I've seen where they uh where they move big tanks like those oil field tanks or water tanks and those things that end up underneath there. And a lot of times they're that they they don't dig, but other animals or creatures will say dig up underneath those to stay warm or cool, and then the snakes will end up kind of taking over it. But uh, I mean, I've seen pictures of them where there's literally hundreds of them in one spot.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

I actually had a a place that uh one of the local local uh uh ranchers called out and everything else. He said, Man, he was he had snakes all over the place. He couldn't, he didn't know where they were coming. So we got to looking and uh come up to Big Old Ravine, and somebody had been uh trying to knock down the erosion, so they had uh were throwing tires all up in there. And that thing was covered with, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of tires. And then things were all all over the place. I mean, two or three hundred we ended up through the whole the whole time getting in there. That's that rubber so hot and it'd keep them warm.

SPEAKER_06 20:47

And there's nothing like crawling up under a house a pair of being mouse to kill snakes.

SPEAKER_04 20:53

Yeah, y'all can y'all can have that under the house crawler.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Are you are you guys sleeping bags too? Them guys get in that shell, they'll get a sleeping bag and they'll put rattlesnakes up in that sleeping bag.

SPEAKER_06 21:04

I'm like, Yeah, that's the craziest. We don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

That's not us. Holy cow. I Andre the giant and did butt because couldn't put me in a sleeping bag. No. Well, a snake. That's the craziest thing I believe I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

That's crazy. So the uh do you guys like respond to calls like if a utility company's has snake issues? Do y'all go and help them out?

SPEAKER_06 21:27

Or yeah, you'd be surprised how many times we get those kind of calls. Uh Mark and I actually this year there's uh we've got some new AI centers that are coming in this area, construction. And uh we had one back in uh February called us that to come in. Uh they had like seventeen hundred acres that uh pretty far out of the country and they were having a lot of snake problems. And so we actually went out there and hunting a couple of times and gathered snakes uh on their property. Uh I know one. They had actually called me a month or two before and they actually had a snake. They had portable offices. They had a snake under the portable office. So yeah, we get calls. And in the dry weather like we're having right now, we'll start getting calls from people here in town actually, because those snakes, when they're looking for water, they'll they'll go wherever they have to go. And so then they start coming into town typically.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Flower beds. Do uh are they more active as they're coming out of winter or when they're getting ready to go in and hibernate? What do you think?

SPEAKER_06 22:33

Uh probably probably going in because they've been feeding all summer. And then they're they're as they're cold-blooded, so the hotter it is, the more active they are. Uh now in those 105 degree days of the sunshine like we've been having, when they're gonna shade up, they can't handle that that type heat. But if it's you you get them in about 85 or 90 degree weather, uh it's a different snake than it is when it's 55 or 60 degrees.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

More aggressive.

SPEAKER_06 23:02

A lot more aggressive. Uh typically, we we don't say they're aggressive at all because we're too big to eat. Typically, when they're biting, it's a defensive mode. They feel threatened. It feels like you step on them or a gal steps on them, or a dog's getting after them, or something like that. They're biting for a defense mechanism.

unknown 23:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:23

We have wild hogs out here, and there are those people that are saying that the hogs are eating up all of the snakes. And they're also saying that the snakes have stopped rattling because the hogs now. Most of us don't believe don't believe too much on that, uh, because their snake numbers haven't dropped. We had 6,000 pounds turned out of this last March, so that was a that was a pretty over 6,000. So that was a real good number, uh, pretty high number. And uh I don't believe that the snake has evolved in the last 25 or 30 years, but not rattled, uh, because that's when we we've only had the hog followed for the last 25 or 30 years.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Yeah, that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Uh so would you say like the the overall habitat uh at least in your guys' area, uh, you know, habitat changes over time. Do you think like in the past it was more hospitable to snakes, or do you think they're just thriving great with the the habitat you guys have now?

SPEAKER_06 24:26

They like our habitat. I I will say that uh other than us hunting, uh I think uh we're only hunting a fraction of the property that's out here. So you when you figure that there's probably less than 5% of the ranch land out here that's actually being hunting, so we know we're not hurting the numbers on that. I I think our biggest number hurt is is the weather, and it's too and it's two things. When we get into severe drought, they have to have water, and a lot of our ground water disappears. And then the second thing of it is uh if we've had an uncommonly warm weather and then we get into a really hard cold spell when we have six, seven days 15 degrees or below, and we do that every once in a while. I think those two things eliminate more snakes than anything.

SPEAKER_04 25:16

So, I mean, this almost sounds like a deer population to me. You know, you got them all over the place. Um you're taking a sustainable amount out every year, and uh you're you're having more of them born every year. Um it sounds like the state manages this and and you you know everybody follows the rules. Um sounds sounds pretty sustainable to me. Sustainable.

SPEAKER_06 25:43

The state has got to be a little more restrictive on us. They uh I guess I don't remember exactly, but like 15 years ago or 20 years ago, you know, you didn't even have to have a hunting license in Texas to us names. But now not only do you have to have a hunting license, if you sell them, like if they sell them to us, you have to have a non-game permit.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Okay. Well, it's help walk me through. Do y'all do this in pairs for safety reasons? Because I imagine if you walk up on a ledge or a cliff, you mean you might be looking at at a snake, but there could be others laying there. How do y'all how do y'all do this? And what tell just walk me through a typical hunt?

SPEAKER_05 26:22

I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you my uh one story on me, and that I did that uh I've been hunting by myself, but uh the last time I went, uh I was up on a uh kind of a Rocky Mountain ledge, and uh I come around and had a uh barrel on my back. Uh and anyway, long story short, I come around this little narrow ledge, and then there's a bunch of cedars below me, probably eight-foot drop off of that uh ledge. Anyway, I heard a little roaring going on and everything else, and got to noticing on this point that uh it was a cloud of uh bees, and I'm like, oh lord. Uh I didn't want to take a chance of them being Africanized bees, so uh I started to make a 180, and when I did, I hit that bucket against that ledge, and then about that time them things went after me, and I had no uh nothing but to jump off that little ledge and I went up in them salt cedars and uh cedar trees and ripped up everything. And uh yeah, last time I ever went, I said I'd never go again. Because you never know. I mean, you're out in the wild out, uh wild, and you never know what you come up against.

SPEAKER_06 27:33

So my my typical hunt is I like to stop at the convenience store first. Make sure the colors are full. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:44

It is hard work, gotta get some snacks too.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

So are you working as a team and spotting, and one guy's watching you walk up and grab a snake, but he's making sure something doesn't slide down a hill and get out.

SPEAKER_06 27:57

A lot of times when you find some, you may at the edge of those dens, you may find several. So when you start trying to gather them, they're gonna sometimes if they're close together, they're gonna start scattering. So if you've got two or three people there with all the catchers, your odds of catching more are a lot higher. And then the safety issues, uh, if you get bitten and you're all by yourself, then that that becomes an issue.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Do uh either one of y'all wear you wear snake boots or chaps?

SPEAKER_06 28:24

Yeah, uh both of us wear snake boots. Uh a lot of people out here wear the the chaps. I I don't, but you know, I do usually normally I wear snake boots if I'm I I have been known not to wear snake boots, but when I started hunting, there was no such thing as snake boots. Yeah, it's worth good snake boots.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

I I don't wear snake boots either because it's not that I'm not deathly afraid, it just wouldn't make any difference. If if I get struck by a snake, it don't matter if I got steel pipes or my I'm I'm down.

SPEAKER_04 28:57

You're gonna just have a heart attack.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Somebody's flying a helicopter to come get me. It wouldn't it wouldn't matter if they got through or not. Oh absolutely. You know the fear of snakes is a real thing. Oh, it is. No, it is a phobia or something like that.

SPEAKER_05 29:14

We we see it at the roundup all the time. You would uh it I mean you think it's funny, but I mean people will literally cry at the sight of one.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

And I'm it's a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

And I I asked Chat GBT, can you be born with a fetophobia, whatever it is? And they said, usually not. So chat's wrong on that. I'm telling you, I got here with look. UFOs, spiders, bigfoot, none of that bothers me.

SPEAKER_04 29:46

I promise you. I can't it's just a it's a middle game. I mean, it's it's kind of like the fear of flying, you know. It's it's safe to fly, you know, compared to cars, but people are scared of it, and it's just hard to get that out of your mind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

And once you got that reputation, everybody's trying to throw a fan belt on you or a piece of garden hose or something like that. And there's nothing you can do about it that I know of anyway.

SPEAKER_06 30:10

So when you're, you know, if I'm out hunting snakes, my fear is pretty minimal. But if you're out doing something else and you nearly step on one, I promise you my heart jumps through my chest is like anybody else because I'm not looking for them and not expecting them.

SPEAKER_05 30:26

Oh, you bet.

SPEAKER_06 30:27

But if I'm if I'm hunting them and I'm expecting it, then it's a lot less. And like uh when we're at the Roundup and I'm we're milking snakes and we're in a pit, and we've got we usually put oh, eight or ten pretty good big snakes on the floor kind of for show. And as we're walking by little snakes showing snakes to people, we get struck multiple times a day uh in the boots, and you finally get to where you don't even notice it.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

That's that I have a hard time believing that. Wow. Uh that you don't even notice it.

SPEAKER_04 30:59

But I mean, they're they're a pretty docile animal by snake standards, uh, best I can tell. I mean, I one time I watched a documentary about rattlers, and uh uh these guys made what looked like a fake arm, you know, and they would reach down with that fake arm and you know grab the snakes, and it took a lot to instigate a bite.

SPEAKER_06 31:24

Well, you know, there's there's some factors to that that they probably didn't consider. One of the factors is uh their their eyesight's not real good because they have an ectoskeleton that covers their eyes and covers it uh because they don't have eyelids to gleam, so it keeps it moist, but that also kind of affects their eyesight. But they can strike in total darkness from the heat of your body. So the body heat is the biggest thing that they're gonna strike at because they're pit vipers. Those pits are like heat-seeking missile uh detection mode. And so that hand that they were sitting down probably wasn't body temperature, so they didn't feel as threatened by it as they would on a live person's hand.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

That makes sense. That's good analysis there, Dennis. I stand corrected.

SPEAKER_06 32:13

It's uh you can chouse with one enough and get them mad enough. But like I said, they're biting for defense purposes, and you're too big to eat defense, or for food, and you're too big to eat, so then it's just defense. And they're gonna uh, you know, they're not gonna want to give up that venom uh right off the bat. So the rattling is a defense mechanism. They have a musk gland that they can spray almost like a skunk. Uh that's just another defense mechanism. We call it Chanel number zero. Oh my lord, does this snail we get sprayed quite a bit uh handling them now down by the tails where it comes from. When they're whipping around, sometimes they'll be spraying through the crowd when we're showing snakes, people get sprayed. Of course, they think that it got venom on them or vent on one or the other there, and we have to explain to them, no, that's just a must smell. Don't worry, it smells go away in five to ten days.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

And it smells, it smells great. How many uh you we get you got all these uh nine Texas flatland whatever coming out just invading your state during turkey season every year? I'm out there, I love it. How many of us you think walk right by rattlesnakes and we're hunting Brady and Brownwood and all that, and never see them because they're so complicated. I was walking with Kevin Burrison up there at uh the the the four the Ford Rancher, and he turned around and said, I thought you were scared of snakes. I said, I am. He said, You done walk by three, and I never saw them. I how hard is it to see them for somebody that's not trained to see them?

SPEAKER_05 34:00

Well, it's hard to answer. I'm gonna answer that one. Uh even if you're trained, it's hard to see them. Uh uh Dennis mentioned that uh AI data center that we went to and everything else. So uh once we went in and we found uh uh some spots and everything else, we grabbed uh a bunch of their uh uh guys and they went out and they kind of we was kind of just teaching them what to be looking for out there just for their own safety and stuff. So anyway, we uh was sitting there looking at one den and what whatever they kind of looked at it and and uh Dennis had kind of showed them and everything else. Well then I came around, I had my mirror to shine the light up into the into the den. And uh I said, I'm gonna take one more look. And I got to scanning around the the mouth of that den and stuff, and this guy standing right next to me. I'm like, okay, whatever I tell you, I'm gonna tell you something, but just listen. Do not move. There's a snake right there next to you. And did he did he stand still? No, he took off running. Well, that snake was cold right there in the in a clump of native grass. Dennis didn't even see him, and I was six and lay down right next to it. So yeah, they're camouflage, they're hard to look. So, you know, you get back to your walk on on your hunting trip and stuff like that. There's probably no telling how many you pass.

SPEAKER_06 35:27

Especially in the in the warmer in the warmer weather. Or if you go down now, South Texas, you know, there's a lot of westerns down in South Texas too, and they're not as many numbers, but they're they're huge down there. And one reason is they don't ever hibern down there, they feed year-round, so they don't shrink back in the winters. So they get really big, but uh they're out all the time down there. Uh here, you know, if if it's cold, uh likelihood of seeing one is pretty slim. Uh and if you do, the likelihood of him striking you if it's below 50 degrees is even less. Uh uh, because he's he's just trying to stay warm. He's not worried about you at that point. Yeah, I'm gonna tell y'all a funny story. Now, this is uh this is a true story. Now there is a lot of not true stories in the hunting. So we had a friend that was a uh a big snake hunter. This guy hunted snakes all the time. He was on uh TV show Colorado Snake the Public. Uh he was a sweetwater JC with us, handled snakes, and he was kind of a character. He had long red hair, a long red beard. Uh so you can kind of picture him. Uh so he one year was volunteering to help me help us out in the milking pit. So he was there and I was standing right on the outside of the pit, and we kind of took take shifts there. And anyway, he walked, turned around, looked at me, and he said, Hey, I just got hit. And I said, Okay. And so we're real cool and calm about it. And I reached down and we used what we call a Sawyer extractor kit, which is a kind of a vacuum syringe-looking deal to kind of try to get some of the venom out. So I picked up one of those kits and I said, Okay, come on with me. So we walk out of, he gets out of the pit and we walk upstairs and out the kind of the side door of the call stand where we are. Uh so it's an area where there's not a lot of people because we don't want to advertise that somebody got bit. Sure. So we get there and I said, Okay, well, where'd he get you? And he pointed out at his thigh on his leg. And I said, All right, well, pull your pants down, let's get this extractor on there. And he kind of hee-hawed around a little bit. He finally looked at me and said, Well, I don't have any underwear on. So that's when I handed him the extractor. By then, there's about two more, two or three more guys standing there. So I just handed him the extractor and said, You're on your own. Come to find out, he got one thing in the leg and it was what we call a dry bite that didn't inject into him. It just kind of tore a chunk of meat out of his leg, and uh he was in a couple hours, he was fine.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Well, let's take what cuz's question and turn it into something we can learn from. What are ways that that help our train our eyes to spot these things?

SPEAKER_06 38:14

Well, uh not so much spot them, but you just need to spot their habitat. Uh, you don't stick your hand under rocks or objects laying on the ground out in this part of the country. Uh, you gotta be real careful in tall grass or spots where there is grass. Piles of rocks, oh, that's the worst. You know, don't run up on top of a pile of rocks. Hang barns, stand there. Uh you gotta it's it's it's more about where they could be and looking for them when you get into those those spots.

SPEAKER_04 38:44

Yeah, I've got a short story about that. Uh be sure and look around when you're in an outhouse before you sit down. I've I've I've I'm I met a really friendly rattlesnake in an outhouse one time, and uh that was not a fun experience.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

You think the old barns and that kind of stuff is cause of the mice and the rodents?

SPEAKER_06 39:07

And because my great-grandmother actually got kind of pit on the backside in an outhouse.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah, them old barns and stuff out in Texas, man, they scare me to death. Because if you got, you know, if you're making habitat that's got shade and holes and all that, and it's got stuff in it that's holding my, you gotta know there's one or two or three or four in there. So I man, I avoid that kind of stuff like the plague.

SPEAKER_04 39:35

Bags of feed, you know, attracting mice. Uh a lot of people put out feed in Texas. I would definitely check uh, you know, up under that bag of feed or the you know, big old barrels or whatever.

SPEAKER_06 39:50

Because they're gonna be looking for those. So if you had if you had a little hunting camp and you had a little kid or something with you're putting corn in, or you know you're gonna have mice in there. And if you got mice, you're pretty likely gonna have snakes too.

SPEAKER_05 40:04

Those concrete uh windmill um uh pads that uh they build for uh water, like water troughs and stuff like that. I mean, those are notorious for having snakes up underneath and everything.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Well, can you explain this milking process? What y'all are doing, and uh how in the world did y'all figure out how to do that? Who's the first guy to say I'm gonna try this?

SPEAKER_06 40:32

That one comes before me, but probably that's where I've probably got my most expertise is in that milking bill. I've I've been working in the milking bin for 30 plus years. Uh I'm the chairman of it for the last 20 years, I guess. Uh also there's uh there's a guy in Alabama uh that buys venom. He's kind of a retailer for venom. Uh and for years I've milked snakes at other roundups uh Texas and Oklahoma to collect the venom. Um for it for him to, of course, he started to use there's 60 something, 68 or nine drugs that have been patented for different different aspects of the venom. Uh it has an anticoagulfactory and a blood den factor that's been very valuable to make now synthetic copy to make uh certain heart attacks, drunk drugs, capitan and captura. Um so that's a that's something that's that's an ongoing deal. I just actually did a video for a company about a month ago uh showing our process of how we milksnakes and how we handle the venom because they're interested in buying venom, but they want to know if we were handling it properly. So what we do is you know, we've got a table with uh with a uh mounted bracket on it that's basically got a uh lab top glass funnel and then uh bucket blow it with ice, and then uh we use baby bottles. The funnel then drips into that baby bottle and surrounded by ice. So the venom is a protein, so you've got to treat it like a protein. So when as we milk them through that glass, we you you put the fangs over the edge of that glass, and then you this is the dangerous part. You stick your other hand up under the snake's face, and then you melt those glands in the top part of their head to squeeze that venom out. So you when you squeeze it, it'll literally just part out into the glass. And there we take that venom and we centerfuse it to kind of clean it up. Uh it's got some milky bag tissue in it, it's kind of purified, and then we freeze it, and then eventually it's freeze-dried, medically freeze-dried into a powder, then it has uh years of shelf life. Now, after that, I don't know all the processes with a lot of processes to it, but basically what happens is they inject non-lethal doses of that venom into sheep, and the sheep builds antibodies and they extract those antibodies from the sheep, and then further process into the antivenom itself.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

That's that's pretty fascinating. But I tell you what, just being a I I've watched, I've seen videos of guys milking these snakes. You're your hands right up on the neck and head of that. You're a quarter inch away from a fang every time.

SPEAKER_06 43:19

And that's usually in our pit when somebody gets bit, it's usually a fang comes off that glass and pops down onto your other hands that's setting up underneath there. It's not usually enough uh pinning them picking them up, it's usually that. And I've probably, and Mark's handled lots of, we both handled, uh I couldn't even tell you how many snakes. Probably as far as just picking up numbers, I've probably picked up as many as anybody in the country.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

Uh goodness. So when you're picking them up, uh are you just using that snake handling stick or do you put them in that clear poly tube?

SPEAKER_06 43:59

Oh, we don't. We laugh at the people of the two.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Yeah. Dennis, I'm going back to your statement of saying you've probably picked up more than anybody. I don't know if um I I'm kind of like juxtaposed between congratulating you and feeling sorry for you.

unknown 44:15

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 44:16

When you're in Texas, uh when you apply for insurance, I know they ask if you jump out of airplanes. Do they have handling snakes on there? They do not.

SPEAKER_06 44:26

No, they do not, thank goodness. That one's not on there.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

How many ounces of venom would y'all get uh on a typical year?

SPEAKER_06 44:33

So we measure everything, like I said, by pounds. So I've been doing it enough years that we actually keep up with all that data. We keep up with how many pounds of snakes we milk when they bring them to us in these big trash cans. They weigh them. We get through milk them, they re-weigh them. So we weigh everything in and out. So we know exactly how many pounds we've milked every year. And it's it's funny that year after year after year, Darley always figures out that we will get a half a milliliter of venom per pound of snake. So if we melt 2,000 pounds of snake, we'll get a liter of venom.

SPEAKER_04 45:12

Okay. So it's really that's not a whole lot for snake. No, I don't think that would that would add to the value of it.

SPEAKER_05 45:24

You know, we can't get all the venom out of them, out of their glands. Uh, there's no way.

SPEAKER_06 45:30

When we milk them, people will say, well, you've milked it, it's not dangerous now. No, they they're still dangerous because they're they're no matter how hard we try to milk them, they can hold something out.

SPEAKER_05 45:40

I kind of use the analogy above when you get to the end of a uh toothpaste, too. I mean, you keep squeezing, you keep getting toothpaste out of it. Same same way as a snake gland. You keep squeezing, you're gonna keep getting venom out of it.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

You know, because uh if you get bit by a snake, I mean anybody, the they they say that the cost of that anti-venom is north of a hundred thousand dollars. If you guys um uh I mean y'all are aware of that as as well, and y'all are creating the pro helping create the product, but boy, it's very expensive.

SPEAKER_06 46:18

I'm just gonna there's somebody that's uh that's worked in that pit with with us that did get bit several years ago. Uh he's actually a business partner of Mark. And uh his his medical total medical bill was I mean, he had good insurance likely. Uh that covered profit part of it, but his insurance bill was about $250,000 by the time he got out of the hospital.

SPEAKER_05 46:44

His portion.

SPEAKER_06 46:45

His portion.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Yeah, and Jeff Jeff Foxworthy told us that story.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

It is his portion. So uh uh but think about a dog now. If it if it if you take a dog to the vet in relation, it's probably $2,500.

SPEAKER_06 47:00

Yeah, probably so big difference.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah, we can go down that rabbit hole if you want to. I'm all about it. Why are we having that difference? I guarantee you.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

We were told that you guys run the cleanest, the most respectable roundup in the business. A guy named Jimmy Stiles in South Alabama, who's a snake-loving guy. I mean, no, what do you I mean he's just an expert on all that stuff. So he he kind of pushed me to get in touch with you guys. But he's he said that the that y'all have so much respect for the snakes and the way y'all handle them and and treat them and all that.

SPEAKER_06 47:41

And it's just something that we have here and that we're trying to utilize for the best interest of something for the JCs. It's our major fundraiser for the year. That makes a lot of money for us. With, you know, it's like 30,000 people come to town that weekend. So we make a substantial amount of money off that, and then that allows that to give a lot of money away to a lot of charitable organizations that need money.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

I kind of read about it and read about it, and you guys do wonderful work. That money's hard to raise these days, and you do great things with it. And the fact y'all have been doing it so long speaks volumes. And be thankful them rattlesnakes don't have antlers, or somebody would mess this whole thing up. I can promise you with that. But what you do is a really great thing. And and I'm not making fun, I'm just, I just I can't get my hands around it. I could if it was something other than a rattlesnake, but nothing but admiration on my end, because I I kind of read and see what you do with the money. So hats off to you guys.

SPEAKER_05 48:40

Well, I tell I'll tell you one thing, you know, for a small community, I mean, we've uh we don't we're not a big city or anything like that. So the impact that it does for our uh our town when uh the roundup ends up happening, we did an impact study back in uh or the chamber did uh back in 2015, I believe. And uh at that point, I think it brought in it was like an eight eight point six million dollar. Yeah, or eight to nine million dollar impact that for that weekend. And that's back in 2015. So you know how everything else is uh uh went up. So I mean that that number's above 10, way above 10 at this point. So that's a big uh that's a big impact for our community and everything.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

I know it takes a lot of a lot of people.

SPEAKER_05 49:28

Yeah, and we're and we're fully respectful on it. Like again, it's our show is meant to uh uh show the respect of a snake. It's it's more of a learn how to live with a snake. And uh our numbers are showing it from our research pit from when we start taking research uh through the pounds and stuff like that. Uh the linear line from the beginning to now is is an upward trend. So uh, you know, we may have 3,000 pounds one year, we may have 5,000 pounds, we may have 10,000 pounds, you know, in another year. As long as our linear trend is still going up and our male to female ratio is uh is in the right order, then we're we're not uh we're we're not gonna take that that species out.

SPEAKER_06 50:13

So and it and it has a supply and demand on the on the on the hunting itself, you know. Uh the more we're paying, obviously, the more people are gonna hunt. And it and it's kind of fatty, you know. There'll be uh a lot of these groups, there's these rattlesnake hunting clubs, but there'll be eight or ten guys in a group that hunt, and uh they'll pull all their snakes together to bring them in. And uh, you know, some years they'll hunt a lot, some years they don't. It may be weather related, just you know, the weekends weather wasn't good or whatever the situation may be. So there's a lot of variables in it, but but it's it's it's really good for us, it's good for the community. Uh, we think it's good for the we think harvesting some of them is actually good for their own population, like in a lot of other species. That's that's what hunting is all about, is it's trying to keep the numbers good.

SPEAKER_04 51:02

But we have respect for yeah, and it, you know, it sounds like folks are gonna try to pick y'all apart, but I I don't think they really understand the the setting and and how it's done. Um, it's just something different than a that a lot of us aren't used to. You know, ever everybody in the U.S. can deer hunt, but uh, you know, you guys have something that's that's more of a regional thing in that area, and uh it's been working well for y'all and the species and and the community. So it seems like a win-win. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:35

We've had a lot we've had protesters over the years, and the funny thing of it is every time we have protesters, it's just good free advertisement for us.

SPEAKER_05 51:44

I mean, honestly, everybody has a right to their own opinion. And you know, they're they're right there in in the way they're looking at it and everything else, and we're we're living it here, so uh we feel like we're right in the direction that we're doing. And uh again, as long as we see the numbers aren't uh uh declining uh uh from the trend, uh the la the linear trend and everything else, and again, male over female, then I think we're we're we're okay.

SPEAKER_06 52:12

Right and hunting, you know, just on the hunting, the hunting is fun. Um it's uh you know, all hunting, you have a little bit of adrenaline. Uh when you shoot a deer or a big buck or something, you got an adrenaline rush. Well, when you catch a snake, I promise you you're gonna have some adrenaline rush. So that part that that part of it's good.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Out of all the guys y'all hunt with, and you probably got a pretty big circle of people that do this, are any of those pranksters like gonna put a rubber fan belt underneath your doormat? Or I I just can I just feel like they would be the best in the world at that. Yeah, we've got those.

SPEAKER_06 52:51

We you know, we we could probably be involved in that ourselves a little bit.

SPEAKER_05 52:56

I think we are involved in some of that in at the roundup. So uh yeah, we we got a magical snake in in a in one of in our bucket that rotates around.

SPEAKER_06 53:06

So yeah, we have a we we're real safe, but we also like to have a lot of fun with the people there, and and usually I you know I can spot fear from a pretty good distance. And so they come up to our pit watching us, and you can spot them, you know, the one that won't come all the way up to the pit, uh and eyes get really big, you know you've got one, you got your good one there, and so we we give them a space of a little treat sometimes to kind of scare them a little bit extra. And so we have fun with it, and and so it's it's it's we make it entertaining.

SPEAKER_05 53:41

So this was some of our friends that ended up calling us here not just recently, that and it timed out good uh that we needed to come capture this one.

SPEAKER_06 53:51

This is this is a recent pickup.

SPEAKER_04 53:58

Look at there.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Goodness Christ.

SPEAKER_04 54:01

Oh, he kind of lunged at the camera.

SPEAKER_02 54:03

So that's a western diamondback. That's a healthy one. Yeah, I'm glad he's there with y'all. Yeah, y'all enjoy him.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Bobby, Bobby, we did a hunt. We did a hunt with a guy in Texas one time, and the closest town was Mercury, Texas. Riley Curry was the guy's name, had the lodge, and he had an aquarium. It was a big one, and it had six rattlesnakes in it. And every time somebody would walk by, they'd you know, hit and rattle that thing. I left. I said, you know, we kept the hunt going. I went to the town, got me a little motel. He had six of them in an aquarium in the den where everybody watched TV, and I was like, somebody's gonna get drunk and knock that aquarium over and not get, and I'm like, so I just went and stayed in town.

SPEAKER_06 54:50

So I've got a friend that keeps a few in an aquarium in his house, and he actually uh I mentioned that the albino snake, so uh he had one that was an albino rattlesnake, he was snow white. You could kind of see the pattern on his back that he was white, and he had uh you talk about a scary snake, this thing had fire red eyes, like a double eye.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

So a true albino, wow.

SPEAKER_06 55:16

He was a true albino, western dynamite rattlesnake. Yeah, with uh they said it happened about once every two or three hundred thousand times, that is pretty rare. And he actually living room for about four years, the snake finally died.

SPEAKER_04 55:31

Okay, yeah, I would imagine they don't really have that long of a lifespan, especially in the wild, you know, being in the sun and they probably lose their vision pretty quick.

SPEAKER_06 55:41

Well, something would probably get them like a hawk or something. Uh roadrunner is a natural predator for to a rat snake. Uh the roadrunner will sneak up behind them and peck a hole in the back of their head.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Jason, why don't we uh let's they brought their own trivia question to try to stump us, guys? I don't know if y'all know this, but we're a hundred percent. Nobody's ever stumped us on a trivia question. Jason, uh our trivia's brought us by the peanut patch. I'm sure out there in Texas, you guys at the convenience stores, y'all probably have boiled peanuts and uh the these peanut butts. Yeah, we love them. I know.

SPEAKER_06 56:18

I just came through Mississippi a couple days ago.

SPEAKER_04 56:21

Is that right? You know, uh I picked up some at the gas station the other day, and uh everybody says get your electrolytes in, and they're you know, they're salty and and they can be spicy, so they're a really good treat to have in the summer uh to help stay hydrated with that saltiness.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

You have to bring them with you because you won't find any of them. Uh we'll have to tell the guys we need to they need to expand out there. All right, Jason. Um look, who would who won the prize this week?

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Uh at Sawyer Henderson2479 on YouTube left a review and it says, Great listen while cutting hay. Always enjoy this group and the guest when on the tractor or driving down the road. All right. It's nice being in that cab.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

All right, so he wins one of these more supial bottom land uh little accessory packs. So we'll get that shipped right out to you. So, all right, guys, look, we're 100% now. I don't know what what kind of question y'all got for us, but Dennis is he's gonna try to get you. All right, well, we're not snake. What do you what would be a snake expert? Perpetology. Yeah, okay. We're not those.

SPEAKER_06 57:33

There's two snakes wrapped together in a like a rope, and they're up, up right, like two-thirds of their body is straight up in the air. What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 57:46

Well, that that that's that we see it all the time. See videos of it all the time. It's a mating ritual, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Uh I got a video of that on my phone. They're like two and a half feet off the ground. I was assuming it was two males, two males battling it out. I thought it was a mating ritual, too, Bobby. Yeah. So what's going on? That's your final answer. Yeah, mine. Mating.

SPEAKER_06 58:12

Okay, and you're wrong. That's two male snakes fighting.

unknown 58:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 58:19

That was my first answer. When when it looks like they're standing up and and doing that, I thought that was two males, but the standing up is usually how you see them.

SPEAKER_06 58:28

Uh, but they will uh I don't have the other picture with me, but uh what they'll do is they'll call up like that and they go straight up, and it's two males, and they're fighting over a female. But what eventually will happen after they're up for a long time, then they will one of them will force the other one, slap the other one on the ground. It's like a body slam. And so that's what you were seeing is the end of the body slam up there. They just body slam and they're laying there still all coiled up, but it's two males fighting over a female.

SPEAKER_04 59:02

Wowzers.

SPEAKER_06 59:03

How about that?

SPEAKER_04 59:04

Well, we lost. As far as rattlesnakes go, uh, how do they have babies? Do they lay eggs or do they come out as babies? How does that work?

SPEAKER_06 59:15

They're live birth, anywhere from 10 to 20 babies. Uh there's no nurturing. When they're born, the mama crawls off and they're on their own.

SPEAKER_04 59:26

Okay, so they got a fend for themselves. I guess they eat little bugs and things until they're big enough to catch a mouse.

SPEAKER_06 59:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:36

And then uh I've never eaten rattlesnake before. Okay, cuz is showing us a video of two cotton mouths fighting.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_04 59:45

Um I mean most of the time is it fried and and how does it taste? I I picture in my mind that it's like frog legs or something, but can y'all describe what it's like?

SPEAKER_06 59:56

Well, first thing I'll describe is my wife will not eat any wild game. She will not eat deer, she won't eat wild turkey, she won't eat anything wild game. But she loves rattlesnake meat. I don't know why, but she likes rattlesnake. But it's uh traditionally deep fried in a batter. Uh it's not a ton of meat. There's the most of the meat's two little back strips down the top of that back, and then uh and it's a white meat, uh, so it's gonna be similar to chicken.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:29

Okay. Tastes like there's no gamey taste to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

You ever eat any cuz? What do you think? I I hope I ne I hope I never catch somebody trying to slip me some of that. Uh I just yeah, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:45

Oh, you don't recognize it because it's got a lot of bones in it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:48

Yeah, I'd love to try it. You know, it almost sounds like eating buffalo ribs. We got we got a local fish around here that you know has a lot of meat on the ribs, and uh, I just imagine it being kind of like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

You're not gonna get a lot of meat off of it. I mean, do you see any of those survival films and stuff, them eating snakes? I mean, that's basically what you're gonna end up. That's been pretty big spinning.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:10

Yeah, it's gonna you I've eaten them, I've eaten them baked, you know, where they baked it uh just cooked straight over a fire, skillet fried without batter, but traditionally it's batter fry. We actually have at our roundup, we actually have a mixed sanction uh barbecue cook-off going on at the same time in the park, uh and that we that we host. And of course, it's all the sanction ribs and brisket and all that stuff, but we also have a special division and it's uh snake beat. So we have a snake meeting.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Sounds young. If I came across a rattlesnake, you know, like on my land, which I've never seen one before, I doubt I would kill it and eat it. But at a function like that where they're just so abundant, I'd I'd love to love to fill my plate up with it.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:02

Y'all have Easters, correct? Uh for the most part, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

Yeah, or the timber rattlers. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:10

Velvet tail, timber rattlers, yeah. I've I've actually handled some Easters. Uh occasionally we'll have somebody bring us two or three just for show. That's how I've kind of handled some. Uh the guy that that used to do our venom, he had about a hundred Easters that he kept in captivity and milk them year around. Uh and I've I've dealt with some of his before. They're big fat boys. I call them big fat boys because they get real big around. To me, they're a little more docile than a western. And a western's a little more docile than like a Mojave or a tray rider. Tray rattlers are they're kind of crazy. But all all these snakes are, I I describe them. People say, Well, how do you know when they're gonna strike? It's like, well, they're just like sharks. You don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

When is when is the roundup every year? Second full weekend of March.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:08

March every year. That's Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:11

It's a three-day event. Actually, we have a more than that because it starts out on we have uh for us, we we have to put the cost in together, so we start about a week ahead of time. Then we have a big family fee. All our people come in on Wednesday night and we eat and kind of celebrate getting everything ready, and then Thursday it kicks off at noon, uh, or a little afternoon with a parade. We have a big parade downtown. And then that night we have a Miss Nick Termer Queen Padges that we do scholarships on. And then Friday morning the gates open for the toss in. And then there's also a Gut and Knife Show next door that's uh sponsored by the pistol club here, and then there's uh we have a carnival, and then we have the cook-off, and then the wine club's uh clean market that's in the livestock bar next door to us. So there's just a lot of things going on, and it's it's it's a lot of fun. Saturday night we have we have a big dance, and uh JC owns a big warehouse that's where we meet and stuff. Uh it's an old lumber lumberyard warehouse, and we have a big dance there. So we just we have a lot of fun with it. Uh and it's it's it's good. We we consider it educational. Uh and we we'd love for y'all or anybody that you know of to come out and see us.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:28

Yeah, that uh, you know, that's spring break for a lot of folks, so that'd be a good opportunity to hit the road and and check out what's going on in Sweetwater.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Yeah, that's incredible. You know, guys, as we should kind of wrap this thing up, Cush, the rattlesnake became a distinct, you know, we're going this is 4th of July weekend, celebrating 250 years. The rattlesnake became a distinct emblem of American defiance and unity during the Revolutionary War. Featured the on the Gadsden flag, which I have which I have flying at my farm right now. I was about to say the animals symbolize vigilance and the willingness to strike back when provoked. Famously echoing the motto, don't tread on me. That's right. So the the rattlesnake is just America's got a pretty fascinating history with this snake.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

And I don't have anything against them. I'm just scared to death of them. That's two completely different things. It is what it is. But you go to my farm, you'll see that rattlesnake flying.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:29

You have respect.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

I have severe respect.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

So, Dennis and Mark, um, gosh, you guys are really interesting. It yeah, you know, I wondered. I mean, you're obviously really smart guys, but I still just scratch my head at y'all walking out there and grabbing these snakes up. Uh for me, I mean, it's partially it's it's an adrenaline rush.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:50

Uh and it I think that's where it probably started. And then when you get past that, then you see all the good, the good that comes out of it. And so you you push through and go it and just do it. Um, and the hunting, the fellowship, you know, there's a lot of fellowship involved.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

All right, guys, we've enjoyed this. Dennis, you're quite the character. Mark, I think you are as well. It'd be a lot of fun to go hang out with you guys. And please tell Karen, thank you for setting this up. Thank you all very much for having us. Thank you. Thanks for making a difference. Yeah, it's it's really it is very different what you guys do, but it is uh you're right there in nature and you're enjoying it. So that's that's important.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Stay out of them sleeping bags. That's where you cross the line.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:32

I have been in a tunnel with some, but not sleeping bags.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

Oh my god. Well, we enjoyed visiting with you guys. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:39

Happy 4th of July. Yeah, thank you so much. Why don't you take abye Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Jason.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

Thanks for tuning in to this week's podcast. Subscribe to Duncan for farming for wildlife magazine and don't forget the Wildcare Podcast.